Acer Iconia W4: After last year's rocky start, this tablet is finally a good buy

Michelle Mastin |
April 29, 2014

The Acer Iconia W4 is a good tablet, but so are all the other options in the 8-inch Windows 8 realm.

Me-too performance Benchmark and day-to-day performance fell right in line with similarly equipped tablets. The W4 scored just behind the Toshiba Encore in all of our benchmark tests, and my experience using the W4 throughout the day was the same. Intel's Atom processors have really come a long way: The experience is smooth and responsive as long as you aren't trying to edit large videos or play the latest games.

The W4 ran for 6 hours and 51 minutes on our rundown test, which is one of the shortest run times we've seen on an 8 inch tablet, though not by much. The Toshiba Encore (if you must have HDMI out) will get you just a few extra minutes, and the Dell Venue 8 Pro will last for a couple hours longer (if you don't care about HDMI out). The W4 will last a full day if you can tolerate some low battery warnings by the evening, but it's nothing close to the 10 hours of run time you'll get from Lenovo's Miix 2 8.

Worth buying? The Acer Iconia W4 is a good tablet, but so are all the other options in the 8-inch Windows 8 realm. If HDMI is an important feature, we've seen the 64GB model selling online for $300 (that's $50 less than Toshiba's Encore 8). If battery life is more important, Lenovo's 64GB Miix 2 is selling online for about $329, and Dell's 64GB Venue 8 Pro is also going for about $300.